Their minimum pledge is $1. A creator can’t make a tier lower than that. So before a patron would pledge $1, pay $1, Patreon would take $.05 and fees would be taken out of the remaining $.95 and sent to the creator. I had $19 in pledges and received $16-$18 of that. Now their claim is that they are trying to make it better for the creators so if a patron pledges $1, now they pay $1.38 and the creator gets $.95. So my collective 11 patrons would now pay a total of $23.42 for their $19 in pledges, of which I would get $18.05…$.11 more than the highest payout I’ve gotten from them so far.

Now, lets’ look at it from the patron side. Let’s say you pledge $1 to 10 creators. before you’d pay $10 on the first and that was that. Now you’ll pay $13.80 on the first. No big deal right? Wrong!. Now you’ll pay $1.38 in ten separate transactions over the course of the month.

“But wait! Why not rotate around your patronage in bigger chunks. If you send one person $10 in a month you’ll only pay $10.64 and then you can pick someone different next month.”

Patreon was attractive as an aggregator that combined and billed in a single lump payment. I can schedule multiple monthly payments without a third party and will continue to support these creators through other avenues. I can also rotate around a set amount to different people without a third party.

So, long story short, goodbye Patreon. For now I’ll be sending my creators bigger amounts less frequently throughout the year unless they find a different solution (KickStarter drip maybe). If you want to continue to support me for now the best way is to PayPal me.